Jade Fern Grove not what i consider winning

for @Sun Eater

he returned to camp, one more mouth to feed. one more who shares the name of lanzadoii. but that lonely feeling festered, it followed him everywhere he went.

but loneliness wasn't the only one that followed.

ghelan halts to turn and face his father. accompanying him was surely a lecture.

the father was aware he could castigate his son. cast him down, demand the surrender of sharadoii.

but as they moved away from the place they had met suliya, he thought with heavy mind upon how this might sunder what tenuous feeling existed between he and ghelan. 

"i know your mother taught you many things from her valley which you will carry with you," sun eater said as those crimson eyes watched him, autumn leaves brilliant in his son's somber face. "but you were born lanzadoii. your mother carried you after the caribou. she grew you beside their herds. choose what you know is true."

his ears perk once his father speaks, and ghelan tries to move a little further ahead before sitting. they were not chasing caribou, so he allowed himself a quick reprieve before answering.
you speak of her with regret. he spoke sharadoii. right now the harshness of lanzadoii would betray him.

perhaps she was not the best wife but she is still my mother. his eyes focus on a leaf drifting from a tree, landing in a spot where the sun seeped through the grove. i am sharadoii as much as lanzadoii. i don't understand the shame in it.

"you are lanzadoii. i honor your mother for giving you life. but sharadoii ways have no place among us. we must be one or the other."

"i am here. she is not. you chose to leave that moon place. and she did not stop you, nor me. she has chosen the fish-eaters, ghelan? will you choose your father or will you be the only sharadoii wolf alone?"

he sat at last, a shadow which stretched down the slight incline.

she stayed with the fisheaters because they didn't hurt her. red eyes flash towards his father's single eye. lanzadoii have only ever hurt her. why would she return? he didn't want her to, anyways. to be surrounded by more?

..i chose to be with you because i want to become more lanzadoii. why was it so bad for him to be both? his mother tolerated the balance, why must he forget her blood? and because you've been done wrong by the fisheaters. ghelan furrows his brow. but you are not guiltless.
i just don't want to forget sharadoii.

he did not argue. he had indeed hurt red leaf. but "i paid for what i did, ghelan," and there surged the light in sun eater — in cen — which would never be contrite, the slashing gleam hard in the one eye not taken from him. 

"the moon tribes, they half blinded me for your mother. i was exiled for your mother. i gave up the name of my own mother, the memory of my first wife, the grave of my son, the long march, and the one village who took us — for your mother." 

now sun eater seethed, resentments venting across the face of his scarlet-eyed son; "there is nothing to remember! i gave everything to make your soul lanzadoii."

a rage that must've been suffocated for many, many months errupts from his father — for a moment it was if a fire had ignited his eye, how brightly it shone. ghelan's own anger accepts defeat, unsure of how to respond other than the flattening of his ears.

silence is his shield, he hides behind it as he finds the best response. 

i know. thats why i came. you.. you hurt. enough.. he mumbles. you've been punished enough. i'm sorry.

for now italics is lanzadoii and sharadoii is unformatted

;;

dragonfire snort rolled out of the caribou hunter.

ghelan crouched.

sun eater stared hard at the winding lines of white-brown caribou, till his eye blurred.

mollified to hear lanzadoii in the boy's tones, at last his shoulders untensed. "saatsine is your birthright. stand up and become a hunter. you have blood-kin waiting to see you be more."

another thing thieved from him; the faces of brothers, of sisters. clinging desperately to the presence of meleys, sun eater slowly stood. "if you are not ready to be strong, then by the laws of our people i must leave you behind."

darkened muzzle descending near ghelan's ear; sharadoii grating; "so choose to be strong."

sun eater stalked away, stiff-backed and righteous with anger.

tension from sun eater escaped from his snort but lingered in the air. ghelan had yet to let go his breath, quiet as can be even when his father's sharadoii brushes his ear. he'd never known sharadoii as cold as the one his father spoke. that warmth he'd left had no place here.

ghelan sat. watched the distance they made as sun eater took steps while ghelan made none. his amulet dangled still, the two caribou teeth clicking against the shell.
just from the moment he took to gaze down at his neck, father.. — aapa grew farther away. after a sigh, the teen hobbles after his father, closing some distance. but not all. he wanted to linger in warmth just a little more.